Those foreign "men" who looked like lackeys seemed remarkably tough.
By then, they had already climbed back to their feet. Each held a gun as they surrounded him, and having learned from their earlier loss, they kept their distance from Matsuda Jinpei. In voices as cold and mechanical as machines, they said, "Please wait where you are."
"..."
The guns looked like old-fashioned Flintlocks in both appearance and design. Yet their handling and recoil were more like those of semi-automatic pistols.
Matsuda Jinpei frowned as he examined the outdated guns, which looked more like Works of Art than weapons, growing ever more puzzled by the rules of this place.
After looking for a few moments, his gaze was irresistibly drawn back to the people holding the guns.
He looked at the group of "lackeys."
His sharp senses as a Ghost told him that every one of these foreign men carried a trace of a Ghost's aura.
But all of it was faint, as though a single Ghost had been split into countless fragments, with one piece placed inside each lackey. The earlier "Professor Moriarty" had been the largest piece among them.
Moreover, while their composition was very similar, none of these fragments felt "alive." They were practically artificial constructs... More precisely, they were somewhat like Shikigami that had lost their vitality after fulfilling an obsession, though they ranked higher than Shikigami.
Still, using a word like "vitality" to describe Ghosts somehow felt a little off...
Matsuda Jinpei briefly sank into thought.
Miyano Akemi had gone through much the same line of reasoning.
The two Ghosts followed the Contract link and tried to send what they had observed to Jiang Xia.
Just like when they had first arrived, the messages had barely been sent before they seemed to sink into thick